A New Life
by Fangirl Writer
Summary: A brief imagining of how we get from the Old Warehouse to the New Life epilogue. Madison-centric and focused on the Madison/Ethan relationship and on Madison's character in general. Rated M for later chapters.
1. Chapter 1

A New Life

Note: There's something of a jump at the end of Heavy Rain leading up to some of the epilogues. I think there was a span of time between the Warehouse confrontation and when Ethan, Madison and Shaun all get a new place and move in together that we never get to see. I wanted to flesh out the circumstances which led up to it, using both events that happened in the game and from my own imagining of what took place right afterwards. This will be a Madison-centric story, based on how my playthrough of events in the game went down.

Chapter 1

Three days after finding Shaun, she was in a cab and headed home from the hospital.

Her shoulder ached where they'd sewn her up after pulling out a bullet and her leg had a nasty enough sprain to warrant placing on a (rather annoying) cast for the next couple of weeks, but she'd been ushered out rather unceremoniously after that with a pair of crutches and a hastily printed discharge note telling her to do pretty much what she already knew. She couldn't _entirely _blame them for their abrupt treatment, of course…she imagined she'd been quite a thorn in everyone's side, trying to stay informed about Ethan and Shaun's conditions while they consistently refused to tell her anything.

'_They probably just thought I was some nosy journalist in the wrong place at the wrong time_' she thought, with a mental sigh '_and who's to say they're wrong_?'

After some adept eavesdropping and schedule watching, she had managed to overhear the number to Ethan's room and waited for a shift change to make a break for it and take a trip to see him. Seeing that his door was open, she had wheeled up her wheelchair to look inside and then paused just outside the door's threshold. Shaun was gaunt-looking and pale with an IV hooked to his arm, but seemed to be sitting comfortably in one of the two chairs she could see. In the other chair was his mother, Grace Mars. Their quiet chatting and occasional furtive glances towards the bed indicated that Ethan was probably sleeping, although she could not see him from where she was. Something in her chest had twisted painfully at the thought of all of them together and she had quietly turned around and rolled away before being seen by the room's occupants. The irritated nurse at her empty bedside when she'd returned to her room certainly didn't help things, but her swimming head and aching heart took all the fight out of her and she'd submitted to the subsequent lecture with meek nods and silence.

Now, as the cab rounded the corner heading to her apartment building and rolled to a stop in front, she breathed a sigh of relief as she spotted her motorcycle parked along the street. "Hmmm…I hadn't even thought of that. I guess Sam must have picked it up for me. I sure hope he didn't stick around, though." she muttered. She liked Sam, but he'd been gruff and overbearing when he brought her overnight bag by her hospital room before and she wasn't in the mood to deal with any hovering at the moment. Slinging the bag over her shoulder, she paid the cab driver and grabbing her crutches, managed to wriggle out of the back seat and make it to a standing position. She shut the car door and then turned around to hobble into her building as the cab drove away. The light rain falling wasn't enough to make the short trek inside particularly difficult, but it did further dampen her mood…she was so tired of rain.

A cringe-inducing amount of mail from the mailbox and a tedious elevator ride later and she was unlocking her apartment door, lightly nudging it shut with her good foot as she locked the door behind her. She slowly made her way down to her big table in the kitchen and unceremoniously dumped her armful of mail in a scattered heap and her bag on the floor, then sat down into one chair while using another to prop up her cast-covered leg as she leaned her crutches against the wooden surface. She sorted the mail into various to-do piles (_bills, magazines, junk…_) and decided that going online to pay the bills could wait until tomorrow. With a grunt, she stood and used her crutches to make it over to the kitchen counter. "I'll have to do something about food eventually, but at least there's always delivery." she sighed, peeking into her mostly-bare fridge. Fortunately there was still plenty of tea in the cupboard and she made herself a hot cup, carefully carrying it over to her couch and setting in on one of her small coffee tables before sitting down on the couch and settling her leg on another table next to it. She lay her crutches on the floor beside the couch, grumbling at what a production every little action was going to be for the time being.

She let her head fall back against the couch cushions with a huffed exhalation of breath and pondered for the umpteenth time whether she'd done the right thing by leaving the hospital without so much as a note to Ethan. She'd had a bit of time to reflect on things lying in that hospital bed and in truth, she was scared of how easily she'd let her guard down with him. Even when she'd first met him, something about Ethan had drawn her in and pulled her close. She was shocked at how quickly they'd gone from strangers to friends to lovers and had no idea exactly how it had happened, aside from the instant (though unacknowledged) heat that had sparked between them as soon as their eyes met that only grew hotter over the course of their brief time together. Even now, knowing she should know better, part of her longed to be by his side again. An even bigger part of her was afraid to face him at all, afraid that he'd think she had taken advantage of him in a vulnerable state. The thought had occurred to her several times over the last few days, making her call herself every curse word in the book and *then* some in her self-loathing and anger. She'd seen the tears on his face and the emptiness in his dead blue eyes and simply acted on instinct, offering everything she had to give to bring him back from whatever terrible place he'd been in at the time…but now she feared she'd made a terrible mistake in doing so.

'_Silly, lovesick fool…what the hell are you doing, mooning over him like this?' _she bitterly chastised herself_._ If she'd had her shit together and done her job right, she would have realized from the start that he was still technically a married man and newly separated instead of hearing it on a news expose after the fact (much to her chagrin) and maybe she would have thought twice before sleeping with him and complicating everything. She honestly had no idea what he'd want to do with his life once he and Shaun recovered from their trauma, now that he was free from the guilt of thinking he was a murderer. '_For all I know, he may want to try and reconcile with his wife._' she thought as she picked up her cup of tea and took a sip, frowning slightly. '_If that's what he wants to do, then I can't get in the way of it…'_

She was pretty sure this state of limbo she now found herself in, torn between not wanting to let Ethan go and wanting to do the right thing by him and his son, couldn't be good for her mental health in the long run. '_At least it wasn't that great to begin with, so I'm not losing much_' she thought ruefully. The physical scars always healed readily enough, but the mental scars from the things she'd seen and been through…they never went anywhere.

Finishing her tea, she grabbed her crutches and rose to put the cup in the sink, then moved to lean against the table so that she could stoop and rummage through her overnight bag for the prescriptions she had been given to take. She picked up the nondescript brown bottles and then made her way to the bathroom to prepare for bed. Carefully stripping out of her loose clothing, she put on a soft silk robe and took both a pain pill and a sleeping pill, washing them down with tap water as she peered at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. "At least insomnia won't be an issue with the hospital-grade stuff" she murmured, glad that she had a way to temporarily cope with the lack of sleep that might have otherwise resulted from being marooned in her own apartment for the time being.

She finished up her evening routine and hobbled out of the bathroom, flicking off the light and making her way to bed. She set her crutches to rest against the glass paneling next to her headboard and then leaned on the headboard to slowly lower herself down, carefully arranging herself onto her back and using an extra pillow to slightly elevate her leg. Staring up at the ceiling of the dark bedroom, she waited for sleep to claim her as rain pattered against the windows and blurred the city lights beyond them.


	2. Chapter 2

A New Life – Chapter 2

Three weeks after finding Shaun, she was reading her own article on the front page of the American Tribune.

Sam had, of course, been thrilled when she'd submitted her final copy for proofing and printing a few days earlier. When she subsequently met with him in his office on the day the article was published and informed him that she had no plans to write any follow-up articles afterwards, his response was just as true to character. "Mad, this is the kind of writing that makes careers!" he'd exclaimed gruffly, waving his hands and knitting his eyebrows together in consternation. "After all the shit you've been through to get this story, you're just going to walk away?" He leaned forward in his desk chair, staring at Madison intently. "Kid, you deserve some time in the limelight for this. That boy would be dead right now if it weren't for you."

Madison looked up from the paper in her hands that she'd been reading over and met his eyes with a tired sigh, rubbing the back of her neck in frustration. Her leg had come out of its cast a week ago, but the brace she now wore around her ankle was awkward and making her tense. It wasn't helping her mood at all and she wanted this stupid meeting over with already. "Haven't we already had this conversation? I don't want any of the limelight. You know it's not about that for me. The Origami Killer is dead and there's no more story to tell. I just want to…put all of this behind me." She glanced between the blinds of his office window into the newsroom beyond, trying to keep her other reasons from being too obvious in her eyes. _'I don't want _him_ to find me…'_

"Madison, you barely wrote about your role in this at all and you know it! This is a great piece, but you wrote about the victims and their families and how much they all love each other…you barely even mentioned the dead FBI agent, or even Shelby, for chrissakes!" Sam drummed his fingers on the desk in increasing agitation as he spoke, continuing to gesticulate wildly with his other hand to emphasize his points. "There's a gold mine of stories here! You've got a real shot at making it big and you're pissing it away, kid!"

Madison had heard enough at this point. She closed her newspaper and grabbed her cane, standing up and leaning on it lightly for support. "Sam, you're a great editor and a great friend. You know I respect your judgment, but I've made myself clear on this. If you want to pull someone else off of their beat and get more articles out of this thing, be my guest…I've turned all of my notes over to you already. I want *nothing* more to do with this story, though." She put her paper down on his desk and then reached down to the back of her chair to pick up her coat, putting it on and zipping it up. "I've been through enough. These families have been through enough. I…didn't know the FBI agent and _Shelby_" she hissed the name contemptuously "…doesn't deserve to be mentioned by anyone ever again".

Sam leaned back in his chair with a defeated grunt as Madison reached to turn the handle and open the door. "Mad…" he said in a more subdued tone, a hint of apology in his voice "I'm…sorry, kid. I won't harass you about it any more. Just…go home and get some rest and don't worry about a thing. Call me when you're ready to go back to work and…if you need anything". Madison opened the door and stepped through, then looked back over her shoulder at him with a half-smile and a nod. "I will, Sam…and thanks." she said in reply, before shutting the door behind her and leaving the office to hail a cab and head home.

'_Well, that could have been worse…repetitive and annoying, sure, but I think he might have actually listened that time and maybe he'll lay off now.' _ she thought to herself in the cab, flipping through a binder full of research materials she'd had one of the interns gather together for her to take home and read. In the binder were several articles and reports on the phenomenon knows as disassociative fugue, what she now thought might be the cause of the blackouts Ethan had described to her in one of his rare moments of openness. Satisfied with the contents of the binder, she flipped it shut and then let her thoughts wander to kill the time for her trip home. She couldn't fully explain, even to herself, why she'd requested that the intern compile the information for her…it might have just been false hope that she'd be able to help him someday. She had not had any contact with Ethan since the day that she had called him with the address of the warehouse and they found Shaun together. She wasn't upset by that, not really…they were pretty much even for the whole Shaun thing after he shot Shelby before he could put a metal spike through her chest, after all. He didn't owe her anything…but she had to admit to herself that she missed him. She wondered how his injuries were healing up and if he'd read her article today. She wondered if he'd been thinking about her as much she'd thought about him…

The squeal of the cab's brakes caused Madison to blink and grimace as it stopped in front of her building. She grabbed her cane and the binder and paid the driver, ambling over to her parked bike as the cab drove off and patting the bike's seat with a rueful frown. The docs had told her it would be three more weeks at least before her ankle sprain had healed up enough to let her ride again and she was starting to get itchy for the road. "Hang in there, girl…" she murmured affectionately to the machine "…we'll get out there again soon." She went inside to her apartment after that, falling onto the couch and rubbing her eyes tiredly. Since her ankle and bullet wound were healing up nicely and her pain levels were manageable by regular aspirin now, her pain and sleep prescriptions had ended at the same time her cast was removed and she had not wanted to raise any red flags at the time by asking for refills. Her sleep hours were already growing erratic again and she knew it was only a matter of time before the nightmares returned, which simultaneously filled her with dread and pissed her off. She rolled her head to the side and noticed that her answering machine light on the nearby desk next to her computer was blinking off and on, indicating a new message. "Argh! If that's Sam again, I swear I'll quit! _No_ job is worth this!" she muttered to herself as she got up and thunked over to the desk with her cane, swatting the play button in annoyance. After a beat of awkward silence, the caller in the message started speaking…and Madison sank down into her desk chair, her knees threatening to give way beneath her.

"Madison? It's Ethan…"


End file.
